Kumbaya, my Lord! Kumba.... *TASER*

October 8, 2007 1:34 PM

ASCAP loves your cookies, but business is business. You may remember, back in 1996, when ASCAP cracked down on The Girl Scouts for singing popular campfire songs and not paying copyright fees. Today, MCPS-PRS - UK's performance rights organization - has sued a popular car repair firm because its employees listen to radio at the work too loudly, and that it therefore constitutes a public performance.

In what seems to be a targeted effort to outdo the RIAA in terms of bad press, performance rights organizations such as ASCAP have been stirring a commotion by cracking down on nightclubs, bars, and even coffee shops throughout the country, and MCPS-PRS has sent warnings to other small businesses that play their radio too loudly before.

Next time somebody sings "Happy Birthday" for you or a friend, please direct them to Unhappybirthday.com for more information on how to pay for their license. [via]

posted by phaedon (88 comments total)

ASCAP has been doing this for decades because they have had a right to under the law. Frankly, I'm a little tired of the latest generation of "I want it all for free" kids that pretend this is some sort of radical new crack down on civil liberties.

Public performance has long included playing music at a level that patrons can hear. Contrary to the portrayal of these links, this is not new and it is not a tax on "free music" or "listening to the radio." Cafes and bars in particular have played the radio "unintentionally" intentionally loud for a long, long time to add to the ambiance, and therefore the bottom line, of the establishment. Even the venerable coffee shop gets revenue from customers and good will generated by the "free" music they don't pay for.

Hey, the choice is clear here - if the music in the background doesn't add do your business, then turn it off or turn it down. If the music does add to your business because patrons can hear it, then you owe (very low cost) performance fees to ASCAP.
posted by Muddler at 1:49 PM on October 8, 2007

If this can be made to apply to those stupid "Type R" idiots with the repetitive-bass-note thumping cars, I'm all for it. Otherwise, wah.
posted by maxwelton at 1:56 PM on October 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I thought you could play the radio publicly all you wanted as long as you kept in the commercials.
posted by zorro astor at 1:59 PM on October 8, 2007

Muddler , I'd be alot more sympathetic to your argument if copyrights ever expired. One of the songs the girl scouts stopped singing was "This Land Is Your Land", copyrighted in 1945. The author passed away 40 years ago, yet it's still not considered public domain. ASCAP wants us to respect the laws they favor, yet lobby hard to change the ones they don't.
posted by ShadowCrash at 2:01 PM on October 8, 2007 [6 favorites]

Any industry that attacks its own customers deserves whatever happens to it.
posted by tommasz at 2:02 PM on October 8, 2007 [7 favorites]

Muddler: Please stop spouting nonsense without at least glancing at the applicable law. (17 U.S.C. 110(5)(A) is what you're looking for.)
posted by The Bellman at 2:04 PM on October 8, 2007

"We only have around half a dozen customers visit a day but now every time one comes in the radio goes off.

"It's not like we are a big store pumping music down the aisles. We just have Radio 2 on and listen to Terry Wogan, Ken Bruce and Steve Wright."

You conflate this with an "I want it all for free" generation.
posted by phaedon at 2:04 PM on October 8, 2007

Frankly, I'm a little tired of the latest generation of "I want it all for free" kids...
And I'm more than a little tired of the latest generation of "We will wring every last penny from your powerless corpses because we are entitled" corporate governance.

I mean, playing the radio while you're working on cars? For chrissakes. A little perspective, please.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:08 PM on October 8, 2007 [16 favorites]

ShadowCrash,

I completely agree. This has been called the "Mickey Mouse" rule as every time Steamboat Willie comes up for copyright expiration, Congress extends the term (thanks, Sonny Bono). The term is out of control.

Still, I don't think these various stores are playing ballads from the 1940s. Instead, they are playing top 40 radio a lot of the time.

What we are seeing here is a need to rework the copyright laws, not necessarily to make this sort of performance crackdown improper, but to balance it out with a fair trade for the consumer.
posted by Muddler at 2:09 PM on October 8, 2007

Thorzdad - read before commenting. This isn't about listening to music while working on cars, it is about listening to loud that it becomes a public PA system for both the worker and the customer.

The Bellman, I know the applicable law, do you? I've fucking published legal writing on the topic. What section are you trying to point to that counters anything I said?
posted by Muddler at 2:12 PM on October 8, 2007

LAWYER FIGHT!! LAWYER FIGHT!!
posted by cavalier at 2:18 PM on October 8, 2007 [8 favorites]

Do we really need to make a big legal dick contest out of this? Because I'm happy to do it. I publish and practice (and teach) in this area too, in fact I've litigated 17 U.S.C. 110(5)(A) (the homestyle exception) twice in the last 18 months -- once I won, once I lost. Given how obscure it is, I'd say you won't find many people who can say that. Give it a read. It's the reason that a case like the one in the UK could never be brought here and has never been brought here (at least not successfully). Small business owners have enough pull in this country to negotiate themselves an exception to Section 106 for public performances on the kind of equipment that would normally be found in a home. So you can play your boombox as loud as you want in your garage or coffee house as long as its just a boombox (or just a single TV, or just a single home stereo with one set of speakers, or whatever). You'll be fine.
posted by The Bellman at 2:19 PM on October 8, 2007

Fuck ASCAP, I fully realize that any pretension to the radio-waves belonging to the public has completely been torn to shreds and shat upon but I still regard this as complete asshattery (and I am not a member of "I want it all for free" generation, how condescending is THAT statement?). OMFG! Someone might hear the RADIO in a restaurant/cafe/mechanic shop? What the fuck ever. If those establishments are playing the radio with the commercials and all I completely fail to see why ASCAP is having a hernia about it. Public performance? Christ.
posted by edgeways at 2:21 PM on October 8, 2007

I completely agree. This has been called the "Mickey Mouse" rule as every time Steamboat Willie comes up for copyright expiration, Congress extends the term (thanks, Sonny Bono). The term is out of control.

Still completely baffled as to why anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity.

When you inherit money and heirlooms from your grandma, should you get to keep it only 20 years, and after that any jerk off the street can run in and snatch her jewelry out of your dresser, screaming "fair use??"

I know no one cries for Disney, but this knee-jerk stance against creative people is strange.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:21 PM on October 8, 2007

The Bellman: Muddler: Please stop spouting nonsense without at least glancing at the applicable law. (17 U.S.C. 110(5)(A) is what you're looking for.)

How is US law applicable to someone being sued in the UK?

None of the links about ASCAP operating in the US suggest that anyone is being harrassed for playing a radio in their place of business. What ASCAP is doing is trying to collect royalties from live performers who perform copyrighted songs in nightclubs and coffee bars. Horrors!

And without a copy of the actual letter sent by ASCAP to the girlscouts it's pretty hard to judge if there's any substance to that story, either. ASCAP denies that they had any intention to prevent the girls singing songs around the campfire (and really, does anyone seriously believe that they would sue over such a thing? Seriously?).
posted by yoink at 2:21 PM on October 8, 2007

Okay, so: music has become such an important part of our society that coffeeshops and auto repair shops need to play music that their customers can hear in order to succeed. Let's assume that's a given.

And, so: digital media format and the network connectivity provided by the internet has made it possible to distribute music at little or no cost to a huge audience, paying or not. Also a given.

Now: lots of people lament that musicians who cannot make money will not produce music, to which others say "hey, wait, computers make music production and distribution cheap, and so the market is flush with free music from people who do it because they love it." To which it is usually said "yeah, but that music is crap."

And when I hear that argument, I always think of Brad Sucks, who so very much doesn't, but that's a tangent.

So why can't coffeeshops and mechanics and others -- for whom the playing of music is so important -- simply play the non-ASCAP music of all those for-the-love musicians, presumably produced and distributed for little-to-no money? In fact, why don't musicians organize and release music collections for this purpose? Or heck, just collect those entries that people on MusicFi, SongFight and others contribute (assuming they've tagged 'em to be used thusly), with a little filtering to keep the quality up? These non-pro musicians (who regularly manage, somehow, to produce professional-sounding music, go figure) get exposure through music they would have made (or have already made) anyway, the coffeeshops and auto repair shops have nothing to worry about, and ASCAP et al have fewer lawsuits to take on.

Is there some part of this whole thing that I'm missing? Honestly, I can't figure it out.
posted by davejay at 2:23 PM on October 8, 2007

Yoink: Mudder's comments explicitly apply to ASCAP's actions relating to recorded music in establishments in the US. First sentence and last paragraph both say so. If he meant to refer to the UK, of course, I owe him an apology as I am not aware of a similar homestyle exception in the UK.
posted by The Bellman at 2:24 PM on October 8, 2007

Muddler , I'd be alot more sympathetic to your argument if copyrights ever expired. One of the songs the girl scouts stopped singing was "This Land Is Your Land", copyrighted in 1945. The author passed away 40 years ago, yet it's still not considered public domain

This is doubly humorous: trying to make some big anti-authority "the man is keeping us down" argument, and in the course of doing so advocating taking money out of the pockets of the descendants of WOODY GUTHRIE, of all people!
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:25 PM on October 8, 2007

“A car repair firm has been taken to court accused of infringing musical copyright because its employees listen to radios at work....The PRS claimed that Kwik-Fit mechanics routinely use personal radios while working at service centres across the UK and that music, protected by copyright, could be heard by colleagues and customers. ”

So the deal is Kwik-Fit tells it’s mechanics to bring in their personal radios, set them all to the same station company-wide, to attract customers?

‘Cos if I drive in to a quick lube place out here, and their mechanics aren’t listening to the same music the one down the street is, it really throws my whole world into disarray. Indeed, I begin to lose confidence in the uniformity of experiance I expect from my swift auto service joints if the same music isn’t playing upon my return months later. The place I bring my business to plays the same song over and over while I wait for my car to be serviced for hours on end.
...can’t remember what it was.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:29 PM on October 8, 2007

"Still completely baffled as to why anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity."

I'm still baffled about why people bring this up, since it gets shouted down in every thread, and researching it on your own takes about thirty seconds worth of google.
posted by klangklangston at 2:30 PM on October 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

The Bellman: Mudder's comments explicitly apply to ASCAP's actions relating to recorded music in establishments in the US. First sentence and last paragraph both say so. If he meant to refer to the UK, of course, I owe him an apology as I am not aware of a similar homestyle exception in the UK.

Neither you nor Muddler (nor most of the people in the thread) seem to have read the actual links. The only mention of people being forced not to play their radios too loud occurs in stories from the UK.

So...let's everybody calm down. Your favorite coffeeshop is still allowed to play KSCK 83.3 "Smooth Jazz for Insomniacs"--unless of course you're in the UK, in which case you're screwed.
posted by yoink at 2:31 PM on October 8, 2007

drjimmy11:"Still completely baffled as to why anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity."

Because if this was the case you'd have no culture, just entertainment you license. I suggest reading Kembrew McLeod's Freedom of Expression. You can download the PDF for free or it's on Amazon as well.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:33 PM on October 8, 2007

Still completely baffled as to why anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity.

For starters, there's the issue of transaction cost. Imagine copyright never expires. Now imagine a hundred years from now I want to create a "Folk Songs of the 20th Century" album. How would I go about that? Perhaps some of the authors assigned the rights to a company, so I could negotiate with them for a license. Easy enough.

But what about the ones that didn't do that? I'll have to track down their heirs to the copyright through wills and (lord help us) intestate succession. This is starting to get more trouble than it's worth, and I might give up.

But what about the ones whose family line died out without assigning the copyright? Under the copyright law in much of the world, it doesn't matter. It would still be a criminal offense for me to put those songs onto my album for sale, even though there existed no person or company that could give me the right to use the songs for love or money. At this point I either have to give up or sell an incomplete album.

If you think this is crazy, consider that there are thousands and thousands of such 'orphan works' with the copyright term we already have. Were it extended indefinitely, the problem would compound itself without end.

Now, as long as we're talking hypotheticals, I think copyright should be adjusted like so:

1. No criminal liability.
2. No statutory civil damages (i.e., normal civil damage rules apply, not the set amounts given in the statute).
3. Copyrighted works must be registered within X years of production in order for the copyright to be enforceable (where X is small).
4. Copyright registration requires a nominal maintenance fee in order to prevent warehousing and arbitrage.

That would fix the worst of the problems, I think.
posted by jedicus at 2:37 PM on October 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yoink: I read the article -- did you read the thread? Mudder got off on a tangent about US copyright law (which is fine and common), I slapped him down, he pissed on me, and someone yelled LAWYER FIGHT! Your puerile insistence on sticking to the FPP shows a marked inability to think outside the box.
posted by The Bellman at 2:37 PM on October 8, 2007

This Land Is Your Land is a funny one to pick as a strawman. The copyrighted lyrics were (perhaps?) adorned with the following: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do."
posted by JohnFredra at 2:38 PM on October 8, 2007 [10 favorites]

Still completely baffled as to why anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity.

Because they're artistic products, and no artistic product is created in a vacuum. Artists continually develop art forms by building and elaborating on pre-existing works in an unbroken evolution, and to restrict their work in the extremes we have done in the last forty years damages the free flow of ideas and progress of culture. Even Steamboat Willie was a parody of a Buster Keaton character, remember - a use which Lawrence Lessig points out would be illegal today, yet there'd have been no Disney without it. No Dylan without Woody Guthrie, no Moby-Dick without Shakespeare, no Tom Sawyer without Story of a Bad Boy, no Shakespeare without the Bible. It's gone out of control and it straitjackets the artistic and intellectual development of our culture.

I think the descendants of artists are entitled to the equivalents of diamonds and jewels, sure -- IF the wealth gathered while copyright is in effect can be converted into some hard currency and passed down in that form before copyright expires. But having the rights to control all mentions and image-occurrences of an ancestor's work is really asking for money for nothing.
posted by Miko at 2:40 PM on October 8, 2007 [9 favorites]

This isn't a case of someone wanting to get something for nothing (at least not on the mechanics end). This is a case of Ascap trying to double dip. The radio station is already paying royalties to play the song initially. The mechanics are allowed to listen to that song on the radio. As long as they're not charging people to listen to the radio in their shops, I don't see why they should have to pay a fee.
posted by drezdn at 2:44 PM on October 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

The Bellman: Your puerile insistence on sticking to the FPP shows a marked inability to think outside the box.

Hey, there's some other way to post to Metafilter than from inside this comment box? Why didn't someone tell me?
posted by yoink at 2:49 PM on October 8, 2007

I am talking US, not UK law. I proclaim no proficiency in UK law. But look again at the fair use standards of the US law - section 4 requires no direct or indirect commercial advantage, and section 5 has a complicated set of requirements if you, as an establishment, intend for the performance to be heard by the general public.

There is the rub - if car mechanics are just listening to the radio for themselves, that's one thing, but if they are playing the radio station over the PA for the people waiting in the lobby, that's another. The harder middle ground is where 2 or 3 stereos are playing loudly in the mechanic's bay where they can be heard in the waiting room - which is what I'm reading in some of those stories. The law gets more hazy there, and ASCAP and the establishment should be using common sense as to whether the playing of the radio should change or whether royalties are due.

As to term on copyright, the Constitutional bedrock for IP laws is to promote the useful arts. There is to be a compromise between protecting IP and the promotion of the arts. When the compromise goes beyond what is needed to promote the useful arts, one has to wonder why. This is what makes IP different and how technology and expression evolves. I, for one, think that the copyright term has extended far beyond what is needed to promote the arts and has gone into overdrive for corporate interests.
posted by Muddler at 2:49 PM on October 8, 2007

Bastards.

Also, from commandline.org.uk (not 100% relavant but as long as my blood is boiling)

..."The phrase used to be "possession is nine-tenths of the law". These days that is not true, some companies want you to not actually own a lot of things that you posses but merely 'license' them. Nothing belongs to you, you iPeasant, everything belongs to your lords and masters...."

posted by seanyboy at 2:50 PM on October 8, 2007

MetaFilter: I've fucking published legal writing on the topic.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:50 PM on October 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

This Land Is Your Land is a funny one to pick as a strawman. The copyrighted lyrics were (perhaps?) adorned with the following: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do."

It's also funny to use that song as an example in a discussion of copyright enforcement and infringement because while Woody wrote the words, he lifted the melody straight from the already public domain longtime folk standard "Little Darlin' Pal of Mine" (the Carter Family did the best known version, which Lucinda Williams covered too). So many of the widely circulating folk songs copyrighted in the 20th century "belong" to whoever they belong to simply because that's the person who got to the copyright office first -- or because it's who Alan Lomax happened to be "discovering" that week.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:51 PM on October 8, 2007

MetaFilter: I've published legal writing on the topic--while fucking!
posted by yoink at 2:52 PM on October 8, 2007

The law gets more hazy there, and ASCAP and the establishment should be using common sense as to whether the playing of the radio should change or whether royalties are due.

ha, ha, ha, ha.
Oh my sides are splitting. Common sense. There's no common sense here. Just the greedy and aggressive tactics of an organisation that has been given a mandate to pretty much do anything they want.
posted by seanyboy at 2:53 PM on October 8, 2007

Muddler: The harder middle ground is where 2 or 3 stereos are playing loudly in the mechanic's bay where they can be heard in the waiting room - which is what I'm reading in some of those stories.

Those are stories from the UK. US law doesn't apply.
posted by yoink at 2:53 PM on October 8, 2007

One other note for those being snarky - The Bellman, you didn't "slap" me down by providing a link without analysis. I'm still waiting for your deep analysis here. I suspect you actually agree with me, and I with you, on what the law says, so big whoop.

For others getting all wrapped up in this being about the UK and stupid accusations about not having read the links in the post well...ummm....

ASCAP stands for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The first link is from SFGate - that being California - and talks about Girl Scouts in the Bay area. So don't say that nothing in the post was about US law.

Sorry if I confused you by taking the radical step of pointing out that ASCAP (in the US) has been collecting fees regarding public performances in establishments for a long time. I know that dared to cross facts in the UK with issues in the US, but I thought MeFi could handle it.
posted by Muddler at 2:59 PM on October 8, 2007

hy anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity
The point of copyright is to ensure that works of art are created. It's to ensure that nobody thinks ... "I won't create this fantastic opus because everyone will make money off it except me."

That's it. At the moment, copyright law stifles creativity and that's against the initial reason the law was created.

I've been told that some of the great Disney movies of the early 20th century couldn't have been created if they had operated within the current copyright laws. That's utterly fucked up.
posted by seanyboy at 3:00 PM on October 8, 2007

And I don't think anyone's arguing that the law is being enforced incorrectly here. The point is that when it comes to copyright, the law is broken & one of the reasons it is broken is because of organisations like ASCAP and the RIAA and the BMI.
posted by seanyboy at 3:03 PM on October 8, 2007

When you inherit money and heirlooms from your grandma, should you get to keep it only 20 years, and after that any jerk off the street can run in and snatch her jewelry out of your dresser, screaming "fair use??"

If some "jerk off the street" could make a 100 percent identical copy without affecting your own use of it, then why not? They aren't stealing it from you because you still have it.

Copyright is not real or personal property. It is a monopoly the state offers for a limited time to encourage people to create. The term should only be as long as provides a useful incentive.
posted by grouse at 3:03 PM on October 8, 2007 [4 favorites]

Muddler:
ASCAP stands for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The first link is from SFGate - that being California - and talks about Girl Scouts in the Bay area. So don't say that nothing in the post was about US law.

Sorry if I confused you by taking the radical step of pointing out that ASCAP (in the US) has been collecting fees regarding public performances in establishments for a long time. I know that dared to cross facts in the UK with issues in the US, but I thought MeFi could handle it.

Yes, and in your first (and subsequent) posts you referred to ASCAP going after people playing radios at their businesses. That was the thing that was in error: ASCAP are going after the Girl Scouts of America for some as yet undisclosed practice. They are going after coffeehouses that have live music that infringes copyright. The are not going after places of business that are playing radios. Your comment in the first post:

if the music in the background doesn't add do your business, then turn it off or turn it down. If the music does add to your business because patrons can hear it, then you owe (very low cost) performance fees to ASCAP.

shows that you were under the misapprehension that ASCAP was going after businesses playing the radio. That was why The Bellman got all "mine puts a bigger dent in my (legal) briefs than yours" with you, and why I (correctly) inferred that you'd failed to read the articles very carefully.
posted by yoink at 3:04 PM on October 8, 2007 [2 favorites]

Still completely baffled as to why anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity.

First of all, for practical reasons. Can you imagine, after all this time, how insane it'd be to ride herd on the 400 Bach descendants who'd be due some teensy fee every time a snippet of a Brandenburg Concerto got used in a watch commercial? Every movie that quotes one line of Shakespeare having to pony up the dough?

But also, I find it sad that we're losing the entire concept of the public domain. Yes, artists deserve huge financial rewards for the works they create. But we have traditionally had this sense that at some point, especially with the works we decide somehow are great, art stops belonging to one person and starts belonging to all of us -- not to rent or lease or borrow but to use freely just as if its our own. Because, y'know, Hamlet IS my own; it's been so deeply embedded into our common culture and collective psyche that treating it as an individual person's piece of private property would strike most of us as daffy at this point.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:06 PM on October 8, 2007 [6 favorites]

ASCAP are going after the Girl Scouts of America for some as yet undisclosed practice. They are going after coffeehouses that have live music that infringes copyright. The are not going after places of business that are playing radios.

No, in the US, that would be BMI, according to coffee-shop owners I've talked to.
posted by enn at 3:19 PM on October 8, 2007

And without a copy of the actual letter sent by ASCAP to the girlscouts it's pretty hard to judge if there's any substance to that story, either. ASCAP denies that they had any intention to prevent the girls singing songs around the campfire (and really, does anyone seriously believe that they would sue over such a thing? Seriously?).

Reeling from the worst public relations disaster since Dan Quayle misspelled "potato," the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) now says that "ASCAP has never sought nor was it ever its intention" to make Girl Scouts pay to sing around a campfire. Other campers? Well, maybe.

Vincent Candilora, ASCAP's vice president and director of licensing, vaguely suggested that dark forces may have been behind a Wall Street Journal article last week that disclosed that the songwriters' group had sought this year for the first time in history to collect fees from children's summer camps.

Candilora conceded that ASCAP had cast a wide and nondiscriminating net in notifying the nation's 8,000-odd summer camps that federal copyright law requires them to fork over fees to ASCAP for any songs they use. (from here; scroll down)

posted by rtha at 3:32 PM on October 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Fuck ASCAP. The music industry needs to die. Almost all of the royalties they collect goes to the publisher and the artist only gets a few pennies (if they even get anything).

Instead of bloated organizations like RIAA & ASCAP that take the money and provide no value in return, we need to pay the artists directly. With digital distribution there's no reason for the big record labels to exist. A small publisher like CD Baby can do as much as any big label and they don't rape their artists profit.

If I pay $1 for a track, I would like to see the full amount go to the artist, rather than a record company that might not even pay the artist until they recoup their expenses, and even then the artist will get maybe $0.10 if they're lucky.
posted by mike3k at 3:45 PM on October 8, 2007

ASCAP has been doing this for decades because they have had a right to under the law.

For some bizarre reason, I'm reminded of a moment from a certain cartoon show:

Dexter: "Dee Dee, why did you take my money?"
Dee Dee: "Oh Dexter, you're so small and weak, I could!"
posted by JHarris at 3:45 PM on October 8, 2007

yoink - no, No, NO! I read the articles, and I was making a comment about US LAW and how targeting businesses has been a long time practice by ASCAP. I'm sorry if I didn't include the line "so big friggin' whoop if it is also happening in the UK as it is a long time practice in the US couched in terms of fair use...blah, blah blah..."

I friggin' KNOW the later article was about the UK. SO FUCKING WHAT???!!! I still don't understand why some MeFites can't wrap their brain around comparisons, and I certainly don't understand why people don't counter the substance of a post.

Instead a bunch of you simply jumped to some odd conclusion that I (or others) didn't read the links. Read them, digested them, took them to another level by stating what ASCAP has been doing for decades - then waited for the copyfighters (what a stupid term) to come out swinging with one-liners.

So, yoink, in short, if you don't have a substantive comment on the copyright laws, stop running about the post insinuating such and such hasn't read the posts because they dared to make a comparison between US ASCAP practice and the UK based article.
posted by Muddler at 4:08 PM on October 8, 2007

Metafilter: Your puerile insistence on sticking to the FPP shows a marked inability to think outside the box.

Metafilter: I thought MeFi could handle it.

MetaFilter: I've written published legal fucking on the topic.

Metafilter: come out swinging with one-liners
posted by Smedleyman at 4:36 PM on October 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I know no one cries for Disney, but this knee-jerk stance against creative people is strange.

One reason that no one cries for Disney is that Walt Disney got rich licensing creative works that were heavily derived from other works in the public domain. In other words, Disney got rich off royalties that could have gone to the descendants of the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault (Cinderella), Felix Salten (Bambi), and Rudyard Kipling (Disney filmed the Jungle Book just a year or two after it went public domain). Disney got rich off copyright rules that made it comparatively easier to make money, but now his corporate descendants at Team Rodent want to make the rules more strict. In other words, Disney got rich off double standards in the evolution of copyright law.
posted by jonp72 at 4:38 PM on October 8, 2007 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: I've fucked (and been fucked) while publishing legal writing on the topic!
posted by ericb at 4:52 PM on October 8, 2007

having the rights to control all mentions and image-occurrences of an ancestor's work is really asking for money for nothing

Uh, well welcome to the concept of inheritance. Nobody tells people that they can collect money from other assets while the original owner lives, but upon death, the asset is lost so you'd better have saved up. What do people want with the Mickey Mouse image, anyway? To make it in icing on the family birthday cake? That they can do already. No, they want to sell t-shirts, too. Who is "really" asking for money for nothing?

The "stifling creativity" argument is particularly bizarre. Please cite the piece of legislation that says I need a copyrighted artist's permission to be influenced by his or her work, and I'll happily rail against the system, too.

On preview: damn, is this your demeanor in court?
posted by dreamsign at 4:58 PM on October 8, 2007

Muddler: yoink - no, No, NO! I read the articles, and I was making a comment about US LAW and how targeting businesses has been a long time practice by ASCAP. I'm sorry if I didn't include the line "so big friggin' whoop if it is also happening in the UK as it is a long time practice in the US couched in terms of fair use...blah, blah blah..."

Muddler, please read your own post. You wrote, in reference to music being played on a radio in a place of business: If the music does add to your business because patrons can hear it, then you owe (very low cost) performance fees to ASCAP.

"To ASCAP"--see? "To ASCAP"! No, ASCAP are not fricking collecting fees for music being played on the radio in the UK. And no, you don't owe fees to ASCAP if you're playing a radio in your place of business in the US.

Most of the people in this thread (including you) made the mistake of thinking that ASCAP was monstering places of business IN THE US for playing commercial radio. I thought it was worth while pointing out that this was not the case so that the discussion wouldn't get too derailed. Now I'm just pissed off that your response to an entirely well-intentioned correction is to stick your fingers in your ears and say "DID NOT DID NOT DID NOT!!!!" when you only have to read your VERY FIRST POST to see that you did!

It's not a crime to have made a mistake or to have responded more to the alarmist tone of the FPP than to the articles themselves, but try to be a big boy when someone points it out.
posted by yoink at 5:13 PM on October 8, 2007

I think it's a curious discrepancy that the term of copyright in the US has ballooned out to 70+ years while the exclusivity of a patent has remained at a relatively svelte 20 years (from filing, which, given the current backlog, only amounts to ~17 years after being granted). You'd think patent terms would remain more in tandem with copyright, unless, of course, there is a compelling reason to keep them short.

While I've heard a lot of teeth gnashing regarding the kinds of things that can be patented, I've not heard much complaint about the length of exclusivity. This leads me to believe that the markets actually do favor a shorter term, as everyone is able to freely benefit from the vast pool of innovation and creativity. Rising tides and boats, etc. But, I just make software, so this is hardly my area of expertise -- anyone have any other explanations for the difference?
posted by JohnFredra at 5:21 PM on October 8, 2007

"In what seems to be a targeted effort to outdo the RIAA in terms of bad press, performance rights organizations such as ASCAP have been stirring a commotion by cracking down on nightclubs, bars, and even coffee shops throughout the country"

That's been going on for a while now. ASCAP nearly put a friend out of business. He co-owned and self-managed a local bar that was very supportive of local music, and he actually liked much of it, one of the few and far between. He would pay bands out of his own pocket if necessary. His bar played CDs before and between sets of live music; the live music was the only reason there was a crowd, not the CDs. Also, the bar was not paying royalties for covers the bands that performed there played. ASCAP did an audit over the course of a few weeks and presented them with the bill. They ended up squeezing out $25 grand when all was said and done. The bar didn't shut down, but the shelves were pretty empty of the fancy liquor for a while. Took quite a while to get back in the black. I do understand the point of doing this, as copyright does protect performance rights, but I have a hard time believing that said music was actually worth $25,000 to the bar's business. It would also be very sad to see a true supporter of local music get shut down by the larger music business, thereby hurting artists more than helping them, as a whole. Anyway, from that point on they only played CDs from bands which gave them to the bar, and gave them explicit permission to play them royalty-free, usually bands that played there. The bar shut down a couple years later, not from that, but I am pretty sure it became a contributing factor to the investors' decision.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:36 PM on October 8, 2007 [3 favorites]

Oh, I should mention that this all went down in the mid-'90s. The bar shut down in '98, iirc. It was the Dingo Bar in Albuquerque, NM, fwiw.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:39 PM on October 8, 2007

“The "stifling creativity" argument is particularly bizarre. Please cite the piece of legislation that says I need a copyrighted artist's permission to be influenced by his or her work, and I'll happily rail against the system, too.”

Bizarre? You know who got sued for sounding too much like John Fogerty?
John Fogerty
That’d be a sort of stifling creativity thing there.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:40 PM on October 8, 2007

mike3k writes "Instead of bloated organizations like RIAA & ASCAP that take the money and provide no value in return, we need to pay the artists directly. With digital distribution there's no reason for the big record labels to exist."

That's not the same thing, though. ASCAP and BMI protect performance rights. Recording rights are usually collected by Harry Fox here in the US. And, truth be told, ASCAP and BMI both pay collected royalties to member artists, but they determine play by random audits. So, the small guys may get some, but hopefully you get played and written down when they do the audit. Or, better, get played in a jukebox. The guys who own and maintain those in bars almost always pay their royalties straight to ASCAP and BMI, because performance of recordings is the central part of their business, and they can easily track what gets played and how many times. But ... all that said, it still doesn't excuse thuggish behavior on the part of those orgs. They really should consider warning businesses about their potentially infringing practices before billing or suing them. It might create a more conducive atmosphere to working together, rather than a threatening one. Quite a lot of the performance infringement is due to ignorance, not malice or greed.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:06 PM on October 8, 2007

krinklyfig writes "Or, better, get played in a jukebox. The guys who own and maintain those in bars almost always pay their royalties straight to ASCAP and BMI"

Or get played on the radio, where playlists are almost always recorded for this purpose.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:08 PM on October 8, 2007

You know, my husband's a musician, and I think it's just that I and our son might inherit some royalties from his work, because we were here and made sacrifices to help him create it.

But why should our yet-unborn grandkids and great-grandkids, etc. etc., still be getting fees off of what their ancestor made, forever? They can bloody well create and live off of their own art, if they have the talent.

Especially since the net effect of such legislation would mean that no-one whatsoever used my husband's work in the future, because they'd have to pay for the privilege. And my husband, oddly enough, wants his music heard even after he's dead, wants it to be an enduring statement--which is what any real artist wants, as well.

These enforcement agencies, on the other hand, for all their poormouthing about artistic reimbursement, have in their greed gone beyond their usefulness to most artists. Movies on fragile nitrate stock rot away in vaults, songs degrade on disks and tapes, because they are caught in the no-man's land of perpetual copyright, never to be seen or heard again; many have already been lost forever. Would those who created them be content with that? Would they say "better for my works to vanish than for my great-great-nephew not to have been reimbursed his pittance?"

Art is a communication from one person to everyone else who sees/hears/experiences it, and laws that only silence that communication instead of spread it are not doing art or the artists any favors. And the greatest protection against loss is reproduction, in as many forms as possible, so that even if the original is destroyed, the work isn't lost. There has to be a point at which a piece of art enters public domain, if only to preserve it from vanishing forever.
posted by emjaybee at 6:22 PM on October 8, 2007 [3 favorites]

Under current copyright lengths, the Star Spangled Banner couldn't have been written to the tune it used, To Anacreon in Heaven.
posted by drezdn at 6:23 PM on October 8, 2007

"Or heck, just collect those entries that people on MusicFi, SongFight and others contribute (assuming they've tagged 'em to be used thusly), with a little filtering to keep the quality up?"

I'm writing the business plan now.
posted by zoogleplex at 6:34 PM on October 8, 2007

emjaybee writes "Art is a communication from one person to everyone else who sees/hears/experiences it, and laws that only silence that communication instead of spread it are not doing art or the artists any favors."

Well ... philosophically, I'm opposed to copyright for those reasons. But without it, the work of artists would get used without their permission to hawk all sorts of products, desirable and terrible. All sorts of crap would be marketed with jingles that artists never intended nor wanted associated with crap. It's not hard to see how the intention was to protect artists, but the law is always a tug of war. Recently, some of the artists and their lawyers got a bit greedy and behind the curve of technology, which always looks bad for people trying to sell their "cutting edge" sensibilities. There has already been a backlash or three, and some products have been taken off the shelves, like CDs with rootkits in the DRM. But I'm all for copyright as it was originally intended, which means we should repeal criminal penalties with the exception of bootlegging (pirating for profit) and shorten the copyright term to a reasonable compromise, maybe 40 or 50 years at most. Like criminal law, it will be harder to roll back than it was to roll out.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:45 PM on October 8, 2007

shorten the copyright term to a reasonable compromise, maybe 40 or 50 years at most.

If I come up with a life-changing invention, it's money for twenty years.

If I find a way to make you tap your toes, it's money for my entire life, plus seventy years.

LOL.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 6:58 PM on October 8, 2007

By the time I am dead the current concept of copyright will be as well. You simply can't effectively stop anyone from copying anything. Any technical restriction is going to be circumvented in a week by some internet nerd with a lot of time on his hands and a love for challenges.

On top of that, copyright infringement doesn't have the moral stigma that keeps other "victimless crimes" illegal - drugs, prostitution. And look how well the laws against those things have worked. Meanwhile, I tell my middle-aged parents about how I download stuff illegally - I wouldn't tell them if I was selling drugs or prostituting myself - but this, they don't care.

Bands are figuring this out. Witness the new Radiohead.

But, a reason to completely lack sympathy for the RIAA, ASCAP, etc: They're useless middlemen bureaucrats suing to enrich their own pocketbooks by the millions and maybe give "the artists" that they moan about a shiny new penny. They're greedy leeches. At least people on Bittorrent aren't looking to make a fast buck with no work.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 7:11 PM on October 8, 2007

Still completely baffled as to why anyone thinks copyright should NOT remain with the descendants of the creator in perpetuity.

You're thinking short-term about a long-term problem.

Imagine when we reach the point where it's impossible for anyone currently alive to do anything creative without hundreds of parasitic descendants of dead artists descending on them looking for their piece of the action.
posted by scheptech at 7:15 PM on October 8, 2007

A.P. Carter (country music) walked to hell and back gathering up music that people had been playing forever in the hill and hollows of the south. He was able to capture a lot of gospel, folk, African/slave, Irish... He was able to copyright most of it, even thought it had been in the public domain. The trade off was that he caught a lot of music before it disappeared.This was in the late 20's through 1930's and the music industry was just starting to realize that they could make money off radio & records. That economic bonanza encouraged the preservation of music with categories such as "race music"
posted by Rancid Badger at 7:35 PM on October 8, 2007

Why shouldn’t teachers get a percentage of all royalties from anything created by anyone who’s ever been one of their students? Indeed - why not a percentage of the all income of all their students (you could deduct for kids who drop out or go on the public tit)?
Facetious there, but the curious thing about intellectual property (what little I know), it’s not so much recognized as protected by, generated by or resting on any sort of “thing” the way, say, a gold mine is.
Your grandpappy discovered a copper mine? Great, you can still work it, but you have to pay property taxes. It’s your work, but the mine rests on land.
What’s the foundation of creative work?
posted by Smedleyman at 7:37 PM on October 8, 2007

JohnFredra, Guthrie himself may have had no problem with the use of the song -- if he was still alive and owned the copyright, but he's not and he doesn't. "This Land is your Land" was published and copyrighted by Guthrie in 1945, when copyrights only lasted 28 years, and Guthrie apparently wrote the message you stated.

However, Ludlow music filed a copyright on the song in 1956 1956 as an original copyright registration, not as a renewal. If they filed correctly, their copyright would have been extended in 1984 when they filed for a renewal. Unfortunately, they screwed up, which means it's public domain now. So although this song is no longer copyrighted, it's due to a loophole/shoddy paperwork, not because of anything Guthrie did or the current laws.
Link
posted by ShadowCrash at 7:46 PM on October 8, 2007

Interesting article (politics of art) on the BBC being attacked by UK record companies for giving away public domain recordings of Beethoven. . No more downloads from the BBC. In order to have a TV receiver or a radio receiver one is required to pay ~$20 a month for the service. Seems to me that you have already payed for the music?

The US analogy is the Congressional effort to eliminate the National Weather Service, by making it illegal for them to provide forecasts. Reasoning here is that NOAA would be in competition with private businesses doing the same.
posted by Rancid Badger at 7:57 PM on October 8, 2007

Dear ASCAP. Sometimes I hear new music on someone else's radio and sometimes I like it and sometimes I go out and buy the CD or download the iTune, and sometimes I buy more music by that artist. All because I heard the music in a bar restaurant or garage. So if the plan was 1. play music. 2. profit. 3 forget plan and fuck it all up then I think you're on the right track.
posted by Gungho at 7:59 PM on October 8, 2007

Your grandpappy discovered a copper mine? Great, you can still work it, but you have to pay property taxes.

Indeed, you can continue to profit from it but only as an ongoing enterprise requiring additional inputs (work) and sharing the economic benefit with other still-alive people who also actively participate (work) such as employees, suppliers, and customers.

The problem, of course, is that corporations don't necessarily die - and yet we've come to think of them and treat them legally as though they were the equivalent of human beings, fellow citizens with the same rights.
posted by scheptech at 7:59 PM on October 8, 2007

I make my living from creative works but think copyright is extremely onerous in its current form. A few years, 20 at most, should be the term, and it should not be renewable.

The ONLY folks who benefit from longer terms are corporations who care jack-all about the actual work whose copyright they own. They're creativity's slumlords.
posted by maxwelton at 8:02 PM on October 8, 2007 [2 favorites]

Maybe corporations ought ta have a life span and die like everything else has to?
posted by Rancid Badger at 8:03 PM on October 8, 2007

Why is copyright its current form a burden?
posted by Rancid Badger at 8:06 PM on October 8, 2007

Metafilter: a big legal dick contest or just plain dicks?
posted by jonp72 at 8:12 PM on October 8, 2007

My ancestors helped dig the Erie Canal. Where's my check?
posted by Miko at 8:18 PM on October 8, 2007

ShadowCrash, I dunno if you're taking umbrage to my comment, but I wasn't calling into question whether or not Guthrie's piece is or should be in the public domain. (And, for the record, bully for us that Ludlow did screw up, as elementary schools everywhere would have to pay fees to sing just that first verse -- you know, the non-confrontational one.) I was simply my intention to note the irony that DrJimmy picked that song in particular as the basis for his screed against all us ingrates who would steal food directly from the mouths of arlo and the other wee guthries. (And to, you know, look all cool by quoting Woody.) So, friends forever?
posted by JohnFredra at 8:42 PM on October 8, 2007

Another copyright thread! Before I even read anything, I want to say that I'd rather have ASSHOLE after my name than ASCAP! Copyright law is too ridiculous!
posted by strangeguitars at 10:04 PM on October 8, 2007

My ancestors helped dig the Erie Canal ... which they also owned?
posted by dreamsign at 10:15 PM on October 8, 2007

Interesting article (politics of art) on the BBC being attacked by UK record companies for giving away public domain recordings of Beethoven.

Hell, Prince was attacked for giving away copies of his own damn music! He did a newspaper-CD giveaway a few months back, cause done helluva uproar.

It's lunacy.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:41 PM on October 8, 2007

drjimmy11: I refer you to my previous comment on why copyright isn't, and shouldn't be a permanent ownership right.

On the matter at hand of scottish car service companies, I'd like to follow up on drezdn's comment, which seems to have been pretty much entirely ignored.

Copyright includes performance rights; to make a public performance of a copyrighted work, the holder needs to be paid for that. The performer has already been paid, via the licencing agency, for the broadcast rights by the radio station.

Music radio, from its very first incarnations was designed for a group of people to gather round the device and listen to it. The broadcaster pays for this, so everyone in range of the station can listen entirely legally for free. Every customer and worker in the shop is entitled to listen to Terry Wogan et al because the broadcaster, the BBC, has already paid the licencing body to allow that. Most, if not all of them pay their TV licence, which also pays for the BBC to pay the broadcast rights agency, so they've paid personally to listen to that radio legally.

Hell, I bet every one of the cars coming in to be serviced has a radio in it, capable of receiving and legally playing Terry Wogan to these same customers in the safety and comfort of their own car.

At what point, where the copyright holders have already been paid their broadcast dues, where everyone in that shop has the legal right to listen to that radio broadcast, and pretty much every one of them has a device to do so, does it become absurd that they were threatened to be sued for individual customers being able to listen to a radio that they didn't personally own being played for the benefit of the staff not being bored out of their mind? At what point does the PRS get to be given some flak for enforcing a very iffy interpretation of that law that might well get overturned if it ever made it to court?

It IS absurd. It makes the PRS look absurd, and it makes UK copyright law look absurd. If only people would actually give a toss about abuses like this, and not just chalk it up to a 'silly story'. Or worse, say 'well ,the law's the law. I should just bend over and take it'.
posted by ArkhanJG at 10:52 PM on October 8, 2007

Just for fun, folks may be interested to know that when you go to a chain restaurant and hear a birthday being celebrated, there's a reason why they sing some stupid themed marching cadence song rather than Happy Birthday.
posted by Miko at 7:29 AM on October 9, 2007

I'm not sure where I got this analogy from, but as a tribe we exempt artists from hunting/gathering because they amuse us, nothing more. We shouldn't be gold plating their teeth and making them our rulers.

I have no problem with artists making a buck off their work, but see no reason they need millions. Which is why, with a few exceptions, my music collection consists of indie artists. They generally make better music anyway (and by "better" I mean speaks to me).
posted by cjorgensen at 7:36 AM on October 9, 2007

I have no problem with artists making a buck off their work, but see no reason they need millions.

Hell, I don't even see a problem with them making millions. I just think that society is better served not by giving millions to the great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the artists.
posted by grouse at 8:16 AM on October 9, 2007

Metafilter: It's lunacy.
posted by jquinby at 11:22 AM on October 9, 2007

JohnFredra, no offense taken or meant. I was just pointing out that the argument shouldn't be overlooked just because the industry screwed up. The artists intention is clear, yet the music company obviously doesn't care about anything but the almighty dollar.
posted by ShadowCrash at 12:00 PM on October 9, 2007

Metafilter: Madonna’s big legal dick coming out of my left ear and Toby the Jap’s plain dicks coming out of my right.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:06 PM on October 9, 2007

Isn't broadcasting the music over radio waves in itself considered a public performance? Why aren't the radio stations being sued? I don't understand why we're having a copyright debate when what's at hand here is the fact that simply having your radio on too loud could be construed to be an illegal act. How? You're simply rebroadcasting that which is already public (i.e. the radio signal) over a different medium (airwaves).

If they are forced to pay then what will happen next? Guidelines as to how loud one's radio must be?
posted by enamon at 5:32 PM on October 9, 2007

Nine Inch Nails is going to dump RIAA now, too. I think this may be the beginning of the end for RIAA!
posted by five fresh fish at 7:20 PM on October 9, 2007